Essential Tips for Retail Digital Signage

Digital signage is the most flexible and customizable way to deliver messages to your retail customers. It has become an affordable, modern and practical alternative to print signage. Shoppers value digital signage in retail spaces when it assists them in decision making and aids in their path to purchase. It can also become your most powerful merchandising tactic.

Don’t be scared off by the technology or anticipated costs. Once you understand how simple and affordable a basic retail system can be, you’ll look at your print signage as a thing of the past. There are a growing number of digital signage technology providers who offer very effective entry level do-it-yourself solutions that could support even the smallest budget. If you are new to digital signage, start off with a basic plug-and-play solution consisting of a screen, media player with content management software and Wi-Fi access.

Digital signage is a powerful message delivery system and not an IT product. It’s all about the Content

Creating effective content on a limited budget can be a challenge for any business. But a big budget doesn’t always mean better, and there are several ways of developing customized and compelling content for your customers.

1. Use a digital signage content creation software where you can build your own content using pre-developed templates for a full range of point-of-sale messaging.

2. Slick content can be distracting and complicate your offer message. You don’t need complexity, but make it visually appealing and seasonally relevant to your target customer.

3. If you need outside help to develop the content, engage local students studying graphic design to deliver creative support as part of their internship requirements.

4. Original content and custom photography is ideal, but you can avoid expensive photo and video shoots by using stock imagery. Take advantage of the very affordable and incredible range of high-quality photo and video assets available from stock photography distributors.

5. Maintain a creative asset toolkit that you can repurpose or recycle throughout the year and reduce the need and frequency to invest in new content creative.

Managing the Messages

1. Evaluate how often you need to change your content and devote time to develop a messaging calendar to include key seasonal events and promotional periods. If your audience is made up of mostly infrequent visitors to your store, don’t invest in changing content more often than needed. And if you can, avoid showing price points that might change based on seasonality or sales trends. This will reduce the time and costs for creative editing.

Be strategic on where you place the screens

Digital signage is most effective and useful to shoppers when it is placed at key decision points within your merchandising space or display windows.

Helpful tips

• Investigate if there are city restrictions or by-laws in place regarding the brightness of a display in a window.

• If you’re in a mall, check if your property owner has advertising rules that won’t allow digital displays with fast-paced animations to directly face the concourse. But once you’re inside your store, anything goes.

1 Comment

Thanks for pointing out that knowing the laws in an area is important since there can be restrictions in window brightness. I guess I would have to share this with my cousin since they will be having one installed in their future establishment. It will be used to locate the offices that they will be having in the building that will be constructed starting next year.